ETC/ULS Report 01/2018: Tourism and the Environment - towards a reporting mechanism in Europe

01 Jan 2019

Silvia Giulietti, Francesc Romagosa, Jaume Fons Esteve, Christoph Schröder

This report is the result of more than four years of joint work between the EEA, ETC/ULS, and the EIONET expert group on tourism and environment as a contribution to explore the feasability of monitoring environmental impacts of the sector and its sustainability trends.

The first part of the report (‘Tourism in multiple contexts‘) draws an overview of tourism as a complex socio-economic sector, that has many policy and social interlinks. The second part (‘Key tourism trends in Europe’) is mainly based on the use of indicators -which were developed during the same period- that show the tourism-environment interplay.

The indicators also address the driver–pressure–state–impact–response (DPSIR) analytical framework. Indicator-related assessments in the report are also complemented, for specific aspects, by information provided by a scientific literature review, as well as with national case studies from different European countries.

The third part of the report (‘Towards an integrated European information system on tourism’) argues the need for developing the environmental dimension under an integrated tourism reporting mechanism for Europe.